Women students ca 1900: anyone you recognize?

Here we have a random item from the photo collections of the archives. It is a group of women students sitting on the steps of the old Normal school building ca 1900. (That building complex, built of Medina sandstone, stood approximately where Hartwell Hall is today, and was replaced by Hartwell in the late 1930s.) We know it's about 1900, because there is a list of names on the back, indicating class years ranging from 1900 to 1903. The only problem is that the names are penciled in, very faint now to read, with no indication of which row is which etc. So we have:

Winifred Riley, Ina Shephard, Grace Davy, Rose Hincher, Lovina Maud Ackerson 1903, Elsie Jesson 1902, Mary _____, Grace Hardenbrook, Florence Bidwell 1900, Gertrude Whipple, Lena Pease 1900, Minnie Jordan, Sarah Pledger 1901, Blanche Hill 1900, Bertha Ames 1900, Bertha Brown 1900, Blanche Lee 1900.

There is no yearbook for those years to look them up in either. There was a one time yearbook for 1899, then it wasn't until the June 1914 Stylus that class photos and a yearbook of sorts was done again. The establishment of a yearbook as a separate, distinct publication did not take place until the Saga was launched in 1929. (The Saga is online now, 1899/1914-1951. More will be added as time permits.) Anyone able to identify any of these women and connect them with a name in the list is invited to comment here or contact the college archivist, ccowling@brockport.edu.)

Was it Camp New Moon?

Just yesterday the archivist did a presentation on Camp Totem, the camp the college bought in 1952 up in the Adirondacks, and it was great to show slides of the camp and hear stories about it. Of particular interest to the archivist was that after mentioning that before Totem the records do mention that the college rented a camp a few summers in Canada, Dorset Ontario to be specific, that was all that was stated, and that the archivist wished he knew more about it.

Then a woman in the audience volunteered that when her sister in law, Peg Hare Brown, went to the camp in Canada ca1950, she went up to visit her there, and believed that the camp was called "Camp New Moon." Googling that name turned up a website for a camp of that name, in Dorset Ontario, that says it has been there for many years. The archivist has contacted them, hoping to find out more certainly if this is the camp that the college used to rent, but if any readers of this blog know anything more about it please comment here, or email Charlie Cowling at ccowling@brockport.edu.

   (Update: the current camp owners responded to an email and said that while their records only went back to the '60s they thought it very possible that New Moon was the camp in question.)

Pictured here are campers at Totem in the 1950s. Totem was located eight miles east of Harrisville NY.